this is 37min long, but well worth it, even though there's plenty of Cisco marketing kool-aid in there towards the end.
was going to OT this post, but the first part is pure gold -- describes the basics of the underlying technologies and development processes, as well as differences between generic CPUs, FPGAs, and ASICs.
taken from TFDX in Berlin, this past Monday (15th).
enjoy,
R.